blind credential?ing - making it possible to facilitate anonymous feedback? while recognizing expertise, e.g. a comment could be reliably recognized as "from a PhD in biology?, or "from someone in the civil service?" but with their name not identifiable

in US

Because of the collaborative ethic? with which it has been developed, agencies and governments are increasingly concerned with open source - a royal libertarian? model - and free software - a form of communism?. See problems with free software and open source models?.

He argued that "the cost of government" will doom it without such measures, and that sharing is the answer: "if one state developed a better electronic licensing system or voter registration system using open source and then shared it with other states, it was "an exercise in democracy through the exchange of information in an open society underpinned by reliable technology."

UK

Perhaps the most advanced work is in the UK. The UK Local E-democracy? national pilot project?s are all open source.

global

Steven Clift? argues that "democracy-related services, from constituent communication systems to blogs for elected officials, are an ideal starting point... the key barrier to overcome is the cost to share and document. One government cannot justify subsidizing value for another peer government unless the resources come from the national level or unless a number of governments contribute and accept the notion that free riders are OK, in fact cherished because they build developer momentum for their code base."